King

With the addition of a piece of fertile land, Hudson's original territory construction plan was directly pushed back to the drawing board. The development of mining areas is very important, and food self-sufficiency is equally important.

Without maintenance, there is little hope for this season's harvest, but the next season cannot continue to be neglected.

No matter what is planted later, it will require a lot of labor. If we want to cultivate more than 20,000 acres of land with the current productivity, we will need at least 700 to 800 strong laborers.

This is still based on the situation that there are enough livestock. Without four to five hundred horses/oxen, it will not be completed at all.

Mining is a labor-intensive industry, and a series of links from "charcoal burning - mining - mineral processing - smelting - continuous casting" require a lot of labor.

Without sufficient input of young and strong labor force, it will be difficult to restore the previous production capacity in a short period of time.

As the main financial source of the territory, production in the mining area must be guaranteed as a priority. There is no spare young labor force that can be invested in land cultivation.

If the labor force is replaced by the elderly, weak women and children, it is necessary to double the manpower investment. Considering that there is a serious shortage of livestock in the territory, manpower is still needed to fill the gap. In fact, the labor force required will definitely be more.

With his solid knowledge of mathematics, Hudson quickly concluded that the territory was severely underpopulated.

Not to mention expanding production capacity, just restoring the previous production will not have enough labor force in the territory.

Now it depends on how many people can be fooled by his subordinates. There is really a serious shortage of labor, so we can only think of a way when the time comes.

After all, at this juncture, even if you want to buy enough slaves, the Southeast Province is still out of stock!

The lords of the two counties of Wright and Wyton were all severely short of men, and the battle for men had already begun.

Before the territory was determined, the price of young slaves in the southeastern province had increased by one-third from before. Now at this time, I am afraid it has risen to the sky.

Even if Hudson wanted to be taken advantage of, he was not qualified to do so. I didn't have enough funds to buy slaves before, and I couldn't afford them now.

Part of the territorial citizens were separated to re-cultivate the newly acquired land. The army's patrol range was also expanded, and Hudson's focus returned to the mining area again.

A simple barracks has been initially set up. Although the living conditions are still crude, they have finally gotten rid of the embarrassing situation of "the sky is the quilt and the earth is the mat".

A lot of charcoal has been stored, and the mines have almost been cleaned up. Although the rebels have done a lot of damage, the Salam Mountains are still dominated by shallow mines.

In places with the best conditions, open-pit mining can be carried out directly. Wherever it is, the mine extends no more than a few dozen meters.

Mining technology is at this level, and mining ores buried in deep areas is Kryptonian life. Although the income from iron ore is good, it has not made the lords crazy enough to give up their moral integrity.

If they encounter high-purity gold and silver ore, or more valuable magic crystal ore, the miners can only pray to the Lord of the Dawn for blessing.

With a serious shortage of labor in the territory and the conscientious Lord Hudson, they naturally would not pursue the idea of ​​deep mining areas, even if the ore deep underground was of higher purity.

At the strong request of the lord, the iron smelters who completed the preliminary preparations started the first smelting after the war.

Watching the iron ore and charcoal quarried by the workers put them into the clay furnace, they started to light the fire and start drying.

The bellows on the side replaced the alchemy blower and started working. It can be seen that the workers are very uneasy about this new gadget.

As if he was a bystander, Hudson just looked at it from a distance and left the smelting site directly.

With the primitive iron smelting process, coupled with charcoal whose burning temperature is not high enough, it is almost inevitable that the quality of the smelted pig iron will not meet the standards.

No miracle happened. The iron block taken out of the furnace was very loose, like an ant nest, with large and small holes. The purity was so low that even Hudson didn't bother to complain.

However, the workers were very interested. It was obvious that the pig iron they usually smelted was of similar quality to this product.

Nothing to say, let’s continue to the next round of process, beating – calcining – beating – calcining – beating…

After repeated tossing and tossing for a few hours, the workers saw that the iron block was almost solid, and then the workers put it into water to quench it.

Inferior pig iron is processed and formed. According to past practice, this thing can already be traded on the market, and the price is not low.

Depending on the quality of the pig iron and the pre-war market price, each pound of pig iron could be sold for about 30 to 55 copper coins.

As for what to process later, that is a matter for the blacksmiths. Anyway, the previous lord, Viscount Alphonse, never provided after-sales service and didn't care what customers used it for.

Looking at the samples in front of him, Hudson gave up the idea of ​​mass production immediately. The pig iron in front of me is undoubtedly inferior.

If you want to improve the quality, you can only go through constant tempering and burning. The reason why we did not continue processing is because it is not cost-effective to continue forging.

After all, charcoal is used. Under the current technology, even if it is hammered a hundred times, the strength will hardly reach the standard for making weapons.

According to the original production model, selling pig iron can certainly make money, but the profits are far less huge than Hudson expected.

It seems that the price of pig iron is not low, but it cannot support the low production capacity of the mining area. According to workers' recollections, the number of workers in the Salam mine at its peak exceeded 4,000.

But according to Hudson's knowledge, Viscount Alphonse, the largest pig iron supplier in the southeastern province, only shipped a pitiful less than 180,000 pounds per month.

Even if part of it is used for personal use, the average daily iron production per capita is only about 1.5 pounds, which is incredibly inefficient.

Considering that part of the charcoal needs to be purchased outsourced, and that miners consume a lot of heavy physical labor and require more nutritional supplements, plus taxes and infrastructure equipment maintenance costs, the profit is estimated to be only about 50%.

Considering that most of the pig iron produced in the territory is of low quality, and the large-scale wholesale price is discounted, based on the unified selling price of 25 copper coins/pound, the monthly income of a shipment of 180,000 pounds is only about 3,000 gold coins, and the income is about About fifteen hundred gold coins.

It seems that this profit is very good, and it can be ranked among the many baronies in the kingdom, but it is far from the huge profit that Hudson expected.

In order to obtain higher profits, it is imperative to improve the smelting process and increase production capacity and pig iron quality.

Without the support of the industrial system, high-tech technology is definitely a no-brainer. The only option for Hudson is traditional craftsmanship.

Many people are familiar with blast furnace ironmaking, but it is not simple at all to actually operate it.

Fortunately, Hudson likes to travel around and has personally come into contact with many blast furnace ruins and has a general understanding of the blast furnace ironmaking process.

Following the example, the blast furnace was not built. Instead, workers were taught how to make kiln bricks.

After commanding his craftsmen and struggling for more than half a month, and experiencing many failures, Hudson finally produced the first batch of bricks.

Perhaps it was because the fire control was not in place, perhaps the quality of the soil selected was not up to standard, or perhaps the workers did not fully understand what Hudson was saying, but the quality of the kiln bricks was hard to describe.

Most of the kiln bricks have cracks, but only a small part are like that and can barely be used.

Directing the workers to try to build the blast furnace, Hudson only felt physically and mentally exhausted. Climbing the technology tree is really not something ordinary people can do.

The simplest primitive iron smelting process is so troublesome to copy. If it is replaced by advanced technology that requires supporting industries, then what's the point?